how many japanese were executed for war crimes
When a nation employs a deceit and treachery, using periods of negotiations and the negotiations themselves as a cloak to screen a perfidious attack, then there is a prime example of the crime of all crimes. [130][131], In 1992, historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi published material based on his research in archives at Japan's National Institute for Defense Studies. [46] After 20 March 1943, the Imperial Japanese Navy was under orders to execute all prisoners taken at sea. The Airmen: Lt. Dean E. Hallmark – Pilot – Executed by Japanese Oct. 15, 1942. Keenan, Joseph Berry and Brown, Brendan Francis, Kyodo News Agency, "Ex-navy officer admits to vivisection of war prisoners in Philippines," reported in. [citation needed] A similar crime was the Changjiao massacre in China. In addition to the central Tokyo trial, various tribunals sitting outside Japan judged some 5,000 Japanese guilty of war crimes, of whom more than 900 were executed. Unlike the works of art looted by Nazis in Europe, the return of property to its rightful owners or even the discussion of financial reparations in the post-war period, met with strong resistance from the American government, particularly General Douglas MacArthur. A Japanese prisoner earlier deliberately tricked the Marines into an ambush by telling them that there were a number of Japanese soldiers west of the Matanikau River who wanted to surrender. For their part, Koreans have often expressed their disgust at experimentation on human beings carried out by the Japanese Imperial Army, where people often became guinea pigs in macabre experiments with liquid nitrogen or biological weapons development programs (see article on Unit 731). Goettge was among the dead. ...read more, On December 23, 1982, the Missouri Department of Health and the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) inform residents of Times Beach, Missouri that their town was contaminated when the chemical dioxin was sprayed on its unpaved roads, and that the town will have to be ...read more, On December 23, 1783, following the signing of the Treaty of Paris, General George Washington resigns as commander in chief of the Continental Army and retires to his home at Mount Vernon, Virginia. Of those convicted, 920 were executed and 3099 were sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment. [citation needed]. During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, when a Moro Muslim juramentado swordsman launched a suicide attack against the Japanese, the Japanese would massacre the man's entire family or village. Lee Kuan Yew, the ex-Prime Minister of Singapore, said during an interview with National Geographic that there were between 50,000 and 90,000 casualties,[72] while according to Major General Kawamura Saburo, there were 5,000 casualties in total. [22] Military personnel from the Empire of Japan have been accused or convicted of committing many such acts during the period of Japanese imperialism from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. [41] According to another account by Jemadar Abdul Latif of 4/9 Jat Regiment of the Indian Army who was rescued by the Australian army at the Sepik Bay in 1945: At the village of Suaid, a Japanese medical officer periodically visited the Indian compound and selected each time the healthiest men. Japanese history textbooks only offer brief references to the various war crimes,[16] and members of the Liberal Democratic Party have denied some of the atrocities, such as government involvement in abducting women to serve as "comfort women" (sex slaves). Wikimedia Commons Robert L. Hite was a U.S. Army Air Force aviator who was captured by the Japanese in 1942. [23], In 1950, after most Allied war crimes trials had ended, thousands of convicted war criminals sat in prisons across Asia and across Europe, detained in the countries where they were convicted. Samuel Eliot Morison, in his book, The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War, wrote: There were innumerable incidents such as a wounded Japanese soldier at Guadalcanal seizing a scalpel and burying it in the back of a surgeon who was about to save his life by an operation; and a survivor of the Battle of Vella Lavella, rescued by PT-163, pulling a gun and killing a bluejacket in the act of giving a Japanese sailor a cup of coffee. CENTAUR", "KPN SS OP TEN NOORT an 6,000 ton 1927 Dutch Passenger-Cargo liner based in Dutch East Indies (Indonesia)", "Harry S. Truman – Executive Order 10393 – Establishment of the Clemency and Parole Board for War Criminals", "PBS. [190] On 11 November, Tamogami added before the Diet that the personal apology made in 1995 by former prime minister Tomiichi Murayama was "a tool to suppress free speech". [208], Sensitive information about the Japanese occupation of Korea is often difficult to obtain. Mosques were also desecrated and destroyed by the Japanese, and Hui cemeteries were also destroyed. They decided not to issue a proper declaration of war anyway as they feared that doing so would expose the possible leak of the secret operation to the Americans. [citation needed], By comparison, the Western Allies did not come into military conflict with Japan until 1941, and North Americans, Australians, South East Asians and Europeans may consider "Japanese war crimes" to be events that occurred in 1942–1945. [18][19], War crimes have been defined by the Tokyo Charter as "violations of the laws or customs of war,"[20] which includes crimes against enemy combatants and enemy non-combatants. Along with war crimes and crimes against humanity (charges 53 to 55), Tojo was among the seven Japanese leaders sentenced to death and executed by hanging in 1948, Shigenori Tōgō received a 20-year sentence, Shimada received a life sentence, and Nagano died of natural causes during the Trial in 1947. As a result, at the time the Koreans had to settle for returning only 1,326 items, of which 852 rare books and 438 ceramic pieces. The ‘imperialist policy’ of their erstwhile allies, said the Russians, had led them to abandon ‘the struggle against war … The new right and new left also take a less sympathetic view of Korean claims of victimhood, because prior to annexation by Japan, Korea was a tributary of the Qing dynasty and, according to them, the Japanese colonisation, though undoubtedly harsh, was "better" than the previous rule in terms of human rights and economic development. [205], Non-government bodies and persons have also undertaken their own investigations. "[184], Between 1946 and 1951, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, the Soviet Union, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, France, the Netherlands and the Philippines all held military tribunals to try Japanese indicted for Class B and Class C war crimes. In it MacArthur states: "I am completely at odds with the minority view of replacing lost or destroyed cultural property as a result of military action and occupation". In total, seven people were sentenced to death, the most famous of these probably being Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. 601/1994" (April 3, 1997), Yutaka Kawasaki, "Was the 1910 Annexation Treaty Between Korea and Japan Concluded Legally? During the war, Japan captured nearly 140,000 Allied military personnel from Australia, Canada, Great Britain, India, Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United States. The proportions in which the assets were distributed were: China, 54.1%; the Netherlands, 11.5%; the Philippines 19%, and; the United Kingdom, 15.4%. [62][63], Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, was fully aware that if Japan lost the war, he would be tried as a war criminal for that attack[citation needed] (although he was killed by the USAAF in Operation Vengeance in 1943). Many argue that this is due to the fact that the government of Japan has embarked on dark paths to cover up many incidents that would otherwise lead to serious international criticism. Currently, the South Korean government is looking into the hundreds of other names on these lists. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance. [128] About 270 thousand of these Javanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in Southeast Asia, but only 52 thousand were repatriated to Java, meaning that there was a death rate of eighty percent. It is suggested that had war crimes tribunals been conducted by the post-war Japanese government, in strict accordance with Japanese military law, many of those who were accused would still have been convicted and executed. [186], By the end of 1958, all Japanese war criminals, including A-, B- and C-class were released from prison and politically rehabilitated. The parole-for-war-criminals movement was driven by two groups: those from outside who had "a sense of pity" for the prisoners; and the war criminals themselves who called for their own release as part of an anti-war peace movement. Japanese law does not define those convicted in the post-1945 trials as criminals, despite the fact that Japan's governments have accepted the judgments made in the trials, and in the Treaty of San Francisco (1952). They have been accused of conducting a series of human rights abuses against civilians and prisoners of war throughout East Asia and the western Pacific region. [98], According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Kentaro Awaya, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, gas weapons, such as tear gas, were used only sporadically in 1937, but in early 1938 the Imperial Japanese Army began full-scale use of phosgene, chlorine, Lewisite and nausea gas (red), and from mid-1939, mustard gas (yellow) was used against both Kuomintang and Communist Chinese troops.[99][100]. In addition to the central Tokyo trial, various tribunals sitting outside Japan judged some 5,000 Japanese guilty of war crimes, of whom more than 900 were executed. An intense and broadly supported campaign for amnesty for all imprisoned war criminals ensued (more aggressively in Germany than in Japan at first), as attention turned away from the top wartime leaders and towards the majority of "ordinary" war criminals (Class B/C in Japan), and the issue of criminal responsibility was reframed as a humanitarian problem. As the result of the Nuremberg process approximately 200, including a number of women, were executed. On November 12, death sentences were imposed on Tojo and the six other principals, such as Iwane Matsui, who organized the Rape of Nanking, and Heitaro Kimura, who brutalized Allied prisoners of war. Also, on 29 September 1972, Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka stated: "[t]he Japanese side is keenly conscious of the responsibility for the serious damage that Japan caused in the past to the Chinese people through war, and deeply reproaches itself."[187]. These were Johann Pauls, SS-Aufseherins Jenny Wanda Barkmann, Elisabeth Becker, Wanda Klaff, Ewa Paradies, Gerda Steinhoff and five other men who had been Kapo's in the camp. [37] Similarly the behaviour of the Japanese military in World War I was at least as humane as that of other militaries in the war,[citation needed] with some German prisoners of the Japanese finding life in Japan so agreeable that they stayed and settled in Japan after the war.[38][39]. [204][205] In South Korea, it is also alleged that, during the political climate of the Cold War, many such people or their associates or relatives were able to acquire influence with the wealth they had acquired collaborating with the Japanese and assisted in the covering-up, or non-investigation, of war crimes in order not to incriminate themselves. "After World War II, we tried, convicted, and in some cases, executed Japanese soldiers for war crimes that included charges of waterboarding," Scott … In Australian trials, 922 men were tried and 641 were found guilty. The countless atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army wherever its aggression took it are reasonably well known. The result was that the Bushido code of behavior "was inculcated into the Japanese soldier as part of his basic training." Which Nazi War Criminals Were Tried, Charged and Convicted at the Nuremberg Trials? In some cases, flesh was cut from living people: another Indian POW, Lance Naik Hatam Ali (later a citizen of Pakistan), testified in New Guinea and stated: ... the Japanese started selecting prisoners and every day one prisoner was taken out and killed and eaten by the soldiers. [84][85], During the final months of World War II, Japan had planned to use plague as a biological weapon against U.S. civilians in San Diego, California, during Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night, hoping that the plague would spread terror to the American population, and thereby dissuade America from attacking Japan. The Japanese military during the 1930s and 1940s is often compared to the military of Germany from 1933 to 1945 because of the sheer scale of destruction and suffering that both of them caused. In fact, Japanese officials were well aware that the 14-Part Message was not a proper declaration of war as required by the 1907 Hague Convention III – The Opening of Hostilities. (Some of the officers involved in the Nanking Massacre were also promoted.). Throughout the Pacific War, Japanese soldiers often feigned injury or surrender to lure the approaching American forces before attacking them. The Japanese claim that this put an end to any Korean claim regarding reparation for cultural goods (or of any other nature). In addition to the central Tokyo trial, various tribunals sitting outside Japan judged some 5,000 Japanese guilty of war crimes, of whom more than 900 were executed. In 2011, 1,923 people were known to have been sentenced to death. Today, in a controversial act, as many as 14 of them still hold a place in the National Shrine, which celebrates the heroes of the Japanese people. I have not found a number for those executed. In accordance with Clause 14 of the San Francisco Treaty, Allied forces confiscated all Japanese overseas assets, except those in China, which were dealt with under Clause 21. It was conducted under the supervision of Allied occupation forces. The Nuremberg executions took place on 16 October 1946, shortly after the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trials.Ten prominent members of the political and military leadership of Nazi Germany were executed by hanging: Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Alfred Jodl, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg, Fritz Sauckel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, and Julius Streicher. They see those convicted of war crimes as "Martyrs of Shōwa" (昭和殉難者, Shōwa Junnansha), Shōwa being the name given to the rule of Hirohito. The airmen were beheaded on Tachibana's orders. ASIN: B000IC3PDE, Trefalt, Beatrice . These numbers included 178 ethnic Taiwanese and 148 ethnic Koreans. [44] The death rate of Chinese prisoners of war were much higher because—under a directive ratified on 5 August 1937, by Emperor Hirohito—the constraints of international law on treatment of those prisoners was removed. According to the Simon Wiesenthal website around 100.000 people in Western Europe were prosecuted for crimes commited under the Nazis. On 7 March 1950, MacArthur issued a directive that reduced the sentences by one-third for good behavior and authorized the parole of those who had received life sentences after fifteen years. [60][failed verification][61][page range too broad][self-published source] Joseph B. Keenan, the chief prosecutor in the Tokyo Trials, says that the attack on Pearl Harbor not only happened without a declaration of war but was also a "treacherous and deceitful act". [12][17] This provoked negative reaction from Asian and Western countries. These events reached their height during the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937–45 and the Asian and Pacific campaigns of World War II (1941–45). Imperial Japanese military personnel deliberately killed 33 American airmen at Fukuoka, including fifteen who were beheaded shortly after the Japanese Government's intention to surrender was announced on 15 August 1945. [citation needed]. [12] Airmen of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service and Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service were not included as war criminals because there was no positive or specific customary international humanitarian law that prohibited the unlawful conduct of aerial warfare either before or during World War II. Back in Southeast Asia, the Laha massacre resulted in the deaths of 705 prisoners of war on Indonesia's Ambon Island, and in Singapore's Alexandra Hospital massacre, where thousands of wounded Allied soldiers, innocent citizens and medical staff were murdered by Japanese soldiers. [106] Tortured prisoners were often later executed. The Japanese Army's involvement is documented in the government's own defense files. For example, many of the crimes committed by Japanese personnel during World War II broke Japanese military law, and were subject to court martial, as required by that law. Although the Kantōgun was nominally subordinate to the Japanese high command at the time, its leadership demonstrated significant self-determination, as shown by its involvement in the plot to assassinate Zhang Zuolin in 1928, and the Manchurian Incident of 1931, which led to the foundation of Manchukuo in 1932. The idea of taking prisoners was swept from our minds. There are many in Asia who believe that not enough Japanese were brought to justice over war crimes. The loss of this patrol and the particularly cruel way in which they had met death, hardened our hearts toward the Japanese. Many of these were due to the mistreatment of captured Union soldiers. In April of 1945, she was caught and arrested by the Allies, then forced to stand trial for her many crimes. [194], The Japanese government, while admitting no legal responsibility for the so-called "comfort women", set up the Asian Women's Fund in 1995, which gives money to people who claim to have been forced into prostitution during the war. For example, in 2011 it was alleged in an article published in the Japan Times newspaper by Jason Coskrey that the British government covered-up a Japanese massacre of British and Dutch POWs to avoid straining the recently re-opened relationship with Japan, along with their belief that Japan needed to be a post-war bulwark against the spread of communism. California Congressman Mike Honda, speaking before U.S. House of Representatives on behalf of the women, said that "without a sincere and unequivocal apology from the government of Japan, the majority of surviving Comfort Women refused to accept these funds. Five Japanese were executed for the murder of American airmen in Indochina, thanks to the assistance of the French. [139], A Dutch-Indonesian comfort woman, Jan Ruff O'Herne (now resident in Australia), who gave evidence to the U.S. committee, said the Japanese Government had failed to take responsibility for its crimes, that it did not want to pay compensation to victims and that it wanted to rewrite history. Because military and international law did not specifically deal with cannibalism, they were tried for murder and "prevention of honorable burial". Whether or not Hirohito himself bears any responsibility for such failures is a sticking point between the new right and new left. Of the 5,700 Japanese individuals indicted for Class B war crimes, 984 were sentenced to death; 475 received life sentences; 2,944 were given more limited prison terms; 1,018 were acquitted; and 279 were never brought to trial or not sentenced. [160] The Goettge Patrol landed by boat west of the Lunga Point perimeter, between Point Cruz and the Matanikau River, on a reconnaissance mission to contact a group of Japanese troops that American forces believed might be willing to surrender. Consequently, when the Japanese murdered POWs by shooting, beheading, and drowning, these acts were excused since they involved the killing of men who had forfeited all rights to be treated with dignity or respect. The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java the Japanese military forced between four and ten million romusha (Japanese: "manual laborers") to work. On this day in 1948, Japanese war criminals from World War II were executed by hanging. Some[which?] It did not eventuate only in the destruction of property. Some executions were still outstanding as many Allied courts agreed to reexamine their verdicts, reducing sentences in some cases and instituting a system of parole, but without relinquishing control over the fate of the imprisoned (even after Japan and Germany had regained their status as sovereign countries). [77], To determine the treatment of frostbite, prisoners were taken outside in freezing weather and left with exposed arms, periodically drenched with water until frozen solid. During the 1990s, the South Korean government started investigating some people who had allegedly become wealthy while collaborating with the Japanese military. In the Japanese equivalent of the Nurnberg Trials, held in Tokyo in 1946, many of the high-ranking officers and government officials were found guilty of genocide and war crimes and executed. [clarification needed] This is because the treaty does not mention the legal validity of the tribunal. [24] One hundred-sixty Taiwanese who had served in the forces of the Empire of Japan were convicted of war crimes and 11 were executed. Wholly aside from this basic misconception, most Americans think of WW2 in Asia as having begun with Pearl Harbor, the British with the fall of Singapore, and so forth. Article 1 of the 1907 Hague Convention III – The Opening of Hostilities prohibited the initiation of hostilities against neutral powers "without previous and explicit warning, in the form either of a reasoned declaration of war or of an ultimatum with conditional declaration of war" and Article 2 further stated that "[t]he existence of a state of war must be notified to the neutral Powers without delay, and shall not take effect in regard to them until after the receipt of a notification, which may, however, be given by telegraph." War crimes trials remain contentious, especially in Japan. Some historical estimates of the number of deaths which resulted from Japanese war crimes range from 3[4] to 14[5] million through massacre, human experimentation, starvation, and forced labor that was either directly perpetrated or condoned by the Japanese military and government. And while these crimes were certainly neither as widespread nor as appalling as those committed by the Nazis, many committed by the United States were utterly devastating indeed: U.S. War Crimes Of World War 2: Mutilation In The Pacific. During the so-called "Age of Imperialism" in the late 19th century, Japan followed the lead of other world powers in developing a colonial empire, pursuing that objective aggressively. "[193], On 29 November 2011, Japanese Foreign Minister Kōichirō Genba apologized to former Australian POWs on behalf of the Japanese government for pain and suffering inflicted on them during the war. [26] The crimes committed also fall under other aspects of international and Japanese law. In the Jesselton Revolt, the Japanese slaughtered thousands of native civilians during the Japanese occupation of British Borneo and nearly wiped out the entire Suluk Muslim population of the coastal islands. Three former (unelected) prime ministers: Kōki Hirota, Hideki Tojo and Kuniaki Koiso were convicted of Class-A war crimes. Of these, 984 were initially condemned to death, 920 were actually executed, 475 received life sentences, 2,944 received some prison terms, 1,018 were acquitted, and 279 were not sentenced or not brought to trial. Geneva, 27 July 1929", See, for example: Wai Keng Kwok, 2001, "Justice Done? These men were taken away ostensibly for carrying out duties, but they never reappeared. [91] The surgery included amputations. It really began in 1895 with Japan's assassination of Korea's Queen Min, and invasion of Korea, resulting in its absorption into Japan, followed quickly by Japan's seizure of southern Manchuria, etc. [citation needed] For example, the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910 was enforced by the Japanese military, and the Society of Yi Dynasty Korea was switched to the political system of the Empire of Japan. Yoshimi claimed that there was a direct link between imperial institutions such as the Kōain and "comfort stations". McDilda, who knew nothing about the atomic bomb nor the Manhattan Project, "confessed" under torture that the U.S. had 100 atomic bombs and that Tokyo and Kyoto were next targets: As you know, when atoms are split, there are a lot of pluses and minuses released. In addition to Japanese civil and military personnel, Koreans and Taiwanese who were forced to serve in the military of the Empire of Japan were also found to have committed war crimes as part of the Japanese Imperial Army.[23][24]. American investigators then questioned these crew members who were still alive. By the late 1930s, the rise of militarism in Japan created at least superficial similarities between the wider Japanese military culture and that of Nazi Germany's elite military personnel, such as those in the Waffen-SS. While Hite fortunately survived this ordeal, many of his comrades met a far grislier fate. [101] For example, during the Battle of Wuhan from August to October 1938, the Emperor authorized the use of toxic gas on 375 separate occasions, despite the 1899 Hague Declaration IV, 2 – Declaration on the Use of Projectiles the Object of Which is the Diffusion of Asphyxiating or Deleterious Gases[102] and Article 23 (a) of the 1907 Hague Convention IV – The Laws and Customs of War on Land. In addition, The Hui Muslim county of Dachang was subjected to massacres by the Japanese military. On 17 January, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa presented formal apologies for the suffering of the victims, during a trip in South Korea. McDilda's false confession may have swayed the Japanese leaders' decision to surrender. As of 2021, no member of the U.S. Navy has been executed since October 23, 1849, when brothers John and Peter Black were simultaneously hanged at yardarm for leading a mutiny on board the schooner Ewing. On this date in 1948, seven “Class A” war criminals, including Japan’s wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were hanged at Sugamo Prison by the American occupation authorities. This notification also advised staff officers to stop using the term "prisoners of war". [citation needed], The Japanese government considers that the legal and moral positions in regard to war crimes are separate. Vivisectionist recalls his day of reckoning". Japan also had a military secret police force within the IJA, known as the Kenpeitai, which resembled the Nazi Gestapo in its role in annexed and occupied countries, but which had existed for nearly a decade before Hitler's own birth. Most historians and scholars agreed that the oil embargo cannot be used as justification for using military force against a foreign nation imposing the oil embargo because there is a clear distinction between a perception that something is essential to the welfare of the nation-state and a threat truly being sufficiently serious to warrant an act of force in response, which Japan had failed to consider. Similarly, they take the position that those who have attempted to sue the Japanese government for compensation have no legal or moral case. All Rights Reserved. Of these, I would suggest that between 6-million and 8-million were ethnic Chinese, regardless of where they were resident. [117][118], Many written reports and testimonies which were collected by the Australian War Crimes Section of the Tokyo tribunal, and investigated by prosecutor William Webb (the tribunal's future Judge-in-Chief), indicate that Japanese personnel committed acts of cannibalism against Allied prisoners of war in many parts of Asia and the Pacific. Many military leaders were also convicted. After the Meiji Restoration and the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate, the Emperor became the focus of military loyalty. One confided: They always told you take prisoners but we had some bad experiences on Saipan taking prisoners, you take them and then as soon as they get behind the lines they drop grenades and you lose a few more people. nine of 11 members of Lt. Marvin Watkins' 29th Bomb Group crew (of the 6th Bomb Squadron) survived the crash of their U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 bomber on Kyūshū, on 5 May 1945. ...read more, On December 23, 1959, Chuck Berry is arrested in St. Louis, Missouri, on charges relating to his transportation of a 14-year-old girl across state lines for allegedly “immoral purposes.” “Never saw a man so changed,” is how the great Carl Perkins described the experience of ...read more. According to the Hague Convention of 1907 (the only convention which Japan had ratified regarding the treatment of prisoners of war), any military personnel captured on land or at sea by enemy troops were to be treated as prisoners of war and not punished for simply being lawful combatants. Another example is the Battle of Yichang in October 1941, during which the 19th Artillery Regiment helped the 13th Brigade of the IJA 11th Army by launching 1,000 yellow gas shells and 1,500 red gas shells at the Chinese forces. War crimes were committed by the Empire of Japan in many Asian-Pacific countries during the period of Japanese imperialism, primarily during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. [191] Some point to an act by West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who knelt at a monument to the Jewish victims of the Warsaw Ghetto, in 1970, as an example of a powerful and effective act of apology and reconciliation similar to dogeza. Jennifer Ellen Robertson, Politics and Pitfalls of Japan Ethnography, Routledge Chapman & Hall. Revealed in the records are details of 58 Japanese soldiers who were sentenced to death in the Manila tribunals that started in December 1945. "Cannibalism". [137], On 12 May 2007, journalist Taichiro Kaijimura announced the discovery of 30 Netherland government documents submitted to the Tokyo tribunal as evidence of a forced massed prostitution incident in 1944 in Magelang. Tomoyuki Yamashita – executed on February 23, 1946. He spoke on the topic in a radio message to the U.S. Army in May 1948, the transcript of which was found by the magazine Time in the U.S. National Archives.